You may have imagined a gathering of important men inside a candlelit rectory or a well-appointed sitting room, perhaps sipping mulled wine while they sat before a hearth and debated what needed to be done, but nothing so organized ever happened.

Everybody in our village knew that Old Bones had abandoned Mogilëv. They also knew that no mere wolf or human marauder, however wanton or depraved, had crushed Cyril’s new chicken coup last week or bashed Michael Bilìbin’s litter of black pigs into piles of bloody wreckage.

At last, it seemed, Old Bones had found our tiny village.

I told my wife, Irina, that I would set out to confront him. My only companion on this dreadful hunt would be my friend, Peter Ivánovich.

“Another old man!” she complained. “Why him of all people? Why you?”

But Irina already knew why. Old Bones was not the first hill demon to slake his thirst on the blood of our farms. Fifteen years ago we hunted down a verminous cretin called the Toe-Eater, and the reasons for our selection remain true to the current task: we’re competent woodsman, not given to drink, not easy to quit, and amiable companions. We’re not ones to rush headlong into the forest with fantasies of vengeance or fame, yet we’re sturdy enough to endure the rigors of camping.

All those years ago we ventured into the forest and successfully returned with the Toe-Eater’s head…that blighted hill demon who nightly burrowed into our family graves in search of food, who supped on stray cats and blind, old hounds, and who—on a bleak December night—snatched the newborn daughter of my neighbor from her cradle and boiled her in a small, iron stewpot.

Bah! The foul devil! Indeed, the Toe-Eater! Even now I can barely write your name without my hands shaking!

We entered the grey forest on foot, for no horse or even sure-footed mule could hope to travail the jumbled course of a hill demon. Old Bones’s ponderous footprints led us to his entry point as clearly as a posted sign.

Earlier, I said goodbye to Irina while Peter stood outside my home, waiting patiently for our departure. The morning sun painted the sky with violent, rose-bellied clouds. The few neighbors we passed bid us luck and stocked us with potatoes and cured meat such as they could provide.

Although rifles were said to be in common use by Alexander’s soldiers, I had yet to actually see one. We walked into the forest armed only with slung bows and loaded quivers. I also had my grandfather’s sword, called Ghul-Rostóv and last used to behead the Toe-Eater, buckled at my hip.

Earlier, I called the forest “grey” and so it was.

The autumn leaves had long since shriveled into a dense carpet of tawny shells. Trees layered the hills with their ashen trunks, naked branches jutting out like squibbles of black ink.

My boots splashed through streams, hefted my body over tangled deadfalls, and sank into pools of mud left by the sun-melted frost. Our breaths puffed like smoke and a blustery wind made the foliage rustle like a dying animal. All nature’s lush bounty buckled beneath fast-approaching winter!

Yet, I found myself enjoying our careful walk. The trill of queer birds, the satisfying crunch of ice as I stepped onto shallow puddles. Fresh air untouched by cattle or pig, the weight of a scabbard filled with sharpened steel at my hip, the glittering brilliance of the sun reflected back on me by a thousand icy eyes pebbled through the landscape—from these I took an oft undernourished joy that was sadly absent from my farming life.

We ate supper while squatting on rocks warmed by our campfire. Pine cones hissed and spat at our mud-caked boots. A tin bowl lay over the fire, housing our meal of bacon and cubed potatoes. We speared our food with hunting knives and chewed in silence, staring into the fire. The forest faded to black and the fire etched what remained of our world from the darkness.

I sipped water and cleared my throat before speaking.

“He made this,” I said, holding a wooden amulet in my hand. Peter discovered it dangling from a branch while we made camp. This patch of forest was hillier than most and fraught with roots; a difficult place to camp, but the setting sun gave us little alternative. This small clearing provided enough room to make a fire and lay out to sleep in shifts, and we were happy to find it…until Peter’s discovery.

“A threat?” he asked, lighting his pipe with a twig recovered from the fire.

“Maybe.”

“Best to protect our camp with snares and trip-wires,” he said. “I’ll make them after I finish my smoke.”

I studied the amulet in my hand. A crude object, just six broken twigs tied together with a knot of leather to form a wooden asterisk.

“I’ll set out Julie,” I said.

Peter nodded silently. He did not chuckle as he did fifteen years ago when I found our little stowaway hidden in my rucksack. Julie is a doll my wife made from an old dress and two wooden buttons. Sonya had smuggled the doll into my rucksack before my departure and on my return informed me that Julie was meant as a token of protection; an extra set of eyes to keep watch at night.

The doll smelled sweetly of my daughter, no coincidence as she was made from Sonya’s old clothes and spent every night smothered in her embrace except for those three lonely evenings spent in my rucksack. I could smell her on the doll even now, many years after Sonya’s death. On those nights while we hunted the Toe-Eater, she was treated less as a trifle and more as a powerful totem of protection.

Certainly Peter regarded her “magic" in a serious light and seemed more relaxed when I placed her near my bedroll where her button eyes could stare unblinking into the darkness.

Peter slept as I took first watch. We had collected plenty of branches to feed the campfire and the moon was bright and full. I held my daughter’s rag doll under my nose from time to time to sniff her sweet scent on the fabric.

In the darkness, I heard a twig snap. A tree shook and a murder of crows took flight, squawking angrily. Though winter was soon approaching, those sounds could still be the midnight rovings of a hungry bear searching for a last meal before hibernation, or an owl hunting for prey.

Maybe.

But I distinctly felt intelligent eyes staring at me. Malignant eyes. The eyes of an unnatural animal. They seemed to watch my every move, just as they watched the gentle rise of Peter’s chest under the midnight moon. They looked at Ghul-Rostóv, sheathed and leaning against a tree, and studied Peter’s massive yew bow and his red-fletched arrows with calculating appraisal.

I caught the barest glimmer of large eyes, like two polished coins, floating several feet above the ground not far from the campfire. They vanished before I could do anything but clasp Julie to my chest and utter a foolish prayer.

The night, I now reflect, is no time for hunting giants!

Morning found Peter’s snares and tripwires unsprung. I found no tracks, no broken branches, no evidence that Old Bones had been grousing near our camp.

While Peter boiled water for coffee and oatmeal, I wandered through the woods, searching for signs of the Devil’s presence. Perhaps the amulet was not meant for us, I reasoned. Perhaps it was a marker that Old Bones left for himself; something to indicate a haven for rest. When at last I found a partial track, it was a long distance from our camp and heading in the same direction as our initial pursuit.

After a light breakfast we each smoked a pipe to warm our lungs.

“The night passed badly for me,” I admitted. “The morning air feels safer, although I have no reason for this. Old Bones could easily strike during the day. The sun offers us no real protection.”

“The Toe-Eater only struck at night,” Peter said, spitting between his feet. “Coward that he was.”

“Old Bones is much bigger. And stouter. I knew this by rumor…but the depth of his footprint is impressive. He must be seven, even eight feet tall.”

“Still flesh and blood.”

“True,” I said. “He is still flesh and blood. Tell me: is that the same bow you used to kill Vsevolöd?”

I already knew the answer, but Peter humored me anyway. “Same bow. Same arrows, too. I only changed their fletching.”

Vsevolöd was a rogue bear who terrorized our village more than twenty years ago, back when Peter and I were still young, robust men; before even our excursion to find the Toe-Eater. He tracked that fearsome animal alone (I was tending to my wife, who was in breeched labor with our daughter) and slew the bear with a single arrow shot through its neck. Vsevolöd’s shaggy hide became a fine rug in Peter’s cabin, measuring ten feet from tail to snout…but he was old, grey-backed, and nearing the end of his natural life.

“We have your grandfather’s sword,” Peter added. “How many Turks did your father slay with that ancient blade? Was it six?”

I smiled around my pipe. “Seven. Eight if you count their Greek servant. He was a catamite, I believe.”

“I do,” Peter said. “Eight men, then, and I’ve slain a bear larger than Old Bones with this very bow.”

“Will it be so easy?”

“No,” he replied. Peter tapped the ashes from his pipe. “We can overcome him…but it will not be easy.”

Around midday Peter made a disturbing discovery. We had been weaving through a maze of game trails, easily tracking our prey by way of broken and bent branches, footprints, and piles of green scat.

I held my hand over the scat and remarked, “Still warm."

“Look there,” Peter said, pointing off the trail, into a crowded thicket where two crows circled above something hidden behind a screen of trees.

I unsheathed Ghul-Rostóv. The ancient steel glinted in the clear winter sunlight. Peter knocked an arrow.

We crept toward the thicket and found a half-finished bit of butchery hanging from a birch tree. A sheep hung from a rusty nail that had been punched through its hind ankle. From the abundant scuffs and scratches left on the bark near the poor creature’s legs, I did not believe the sheep was dead when Old Bones pressed it against the trunk and began his grisly work. The poor creature's throat had been torn out by a massive hand, its blood splattered on the white trunk and puddled within a bowl of gnarled roots. A hole had been dug in the frozen earth near the tree by the same large fingers, torn from the ground in great chunks and tossed aside. The finger gouges in both beast and earth ran a shudder through me—such large digits!

“He left in haste,” Peter said, pointing at the hand-gouged hole in the ground. “He meant to bury this calf, but we interrupted him. He’s close—and he knows we’re coming.”

“Where did he find a sheep in these wilds?”

Peter shrugged. “Cyril has a ranch east of these hills. Old Bones may have snatched it from there...or perhaps it came from one of our farms and he smuggled it into this thicket on his back, bleating and bucking and all. Either is possible.”

“Let us make haste,” I said. “Maybe we can run the devil down before sunset!”

We happened upon Old Bones not long after finding the sheep, during an uneventful trek through a slippery riverbed. The unlikely sighting froze all participants in place.

Old Bones was crouched upon a wide, flat rock under a veil of branches, close enough for us to loose our hastily drawn arrows, but far enough away that rushing to engage him in hand-to-hand melee would be impossible unless one of our arrows hobbled his flight. Frost puffed from his mouth in great, rolling clouds.

Hardly had I lifted my bow when Peter loosed his arrow. The White Devil quickly withdrew behind a tree. Branches snapped and rattled in the path of my friend’s arrow, and—Lo!—did the awful hill demon roar when Peter’s iron tip struck home. Old Bones vanished from sight, but his cry was unmistakable. I loosed my own shaft and heard a second report: another strangled cry!

Old Bones resembled the Toe-Eater in many ways. They both had simian arms topped with fingers that touched their knees and stooped, narrow shoulders. They also shared an oval-shaped head with fleshy lips and a neanderthal’s brow—a mixture of primitive man and the worst birth defects of his modern cousin.

There the similarities ended. Toe-Eater had barely reached my chest, whereas Old Bones seemed to tower over us even when standing at such a distance. His brethren had mottled, olive skin like a well-used oil rag. Old Bones had skin the color of salt. His hair was a shock of cotton, tied in a strange top-knot that sat on his head like a peeled onion. Dirt streaked and splattered his naked skin, making the clean patches of flesh seem all the more disturbingly white by contrast, and he wore little in the way of clothes; bits and scraps of animal hide and a dirty bear skin cape with a raw belly.

His massive feet thumped onto rocks and piled leaves. We heard branches snap and saw the ink-drawn tops of many trees shudder in the path of his retreat.

“On him!” snarled Peter. “Let this be the end of the White Devil! Nicholas, draw your blade and let us take him! Hear ye the misshapen fool? The coward? He blubbers for mercy! Hah! Damn his head and spend not a moment in consideration of mercy!”

I did not hear Old Bones call for mercy—only his thumping, retreating steps growing faint as we slipped and stubbled across the river bed in our hurry to catch him—but the thought of the White Devil asking to be spared, whether real or imagined, seemed to incense Peter beyond all reason. I’d never seen him so furious!

“On him! On the pale devil! The outcast albino!” he cried. “ON HIM!”

All the rest of the day we pursued Old Bones. Though we came close to catching him a few times, he managed to stay out of reach of Peter’s massive bow. His trail was simple enough to follow; if not a muddy print, then a broken sapling, if not a broken sapling, then blood splattered on a rock.

We came upon a birch tree leaning against its fellows, roots pulled from the ground, with a gigantic red handprint stamped on the bark. More blood had fallen onto the ground below the tree, forming a cold puddle in the valley of several large rocks.

“He used this tree for support,” Peter said, then pointed at the red, mirror-like puddle between the rocks. “His blood dripped here while he struggled to catch his flagging breath.”

“He has an arrow in his lung or perhaps deep in his belly,” Peter said.

“Perhaps,” I said, unconvinced.

Although Peter wanted badly to pursue Old Bones with the reckless vigor of a young man, his knees and aching feet slowed him down…much to my relief. He called for occasional breaks to sit on rocks and massage his swollen knees, and during these breaks I was able to express my growing fear that Old Bones—that crafty devil, who I heard by rumor was more seasoned and sly than all others of his brood—may be leading us into a trap.

Between the cold seeping through his clothes, the throbbing ache in his knees (which crunched like old leather when he rose from sitting), the hollow pangs in his grumbling gut, and the bone-deep fatigue from our constant movement up and down hills and scrambling over tall rocks, Peter’s bloodlust subsided and he began to think again as the competent woodsman whose partnership and insight I needed on this bitter quest.

When the sun sank behind the tree line, Peter said we should camp well away from the creature’s trail and keep a small fire in case Old Bones was faking the severity of his injuries and planned to double-back and sneak into our camp under the cover of night.

We found a suitable place in a nest of trees surrounded on all sides by bald patches of land scorched by an ancient fire. Easy enough to see the lumbering brute approach. Peter lit a fire close to the trees using hardwood that would not smoke and built a small rock oven to hide the flickering light. Younger men might have attempted a cold camp, maybe eaten cold food, and relied on their bodies and blankets to see them through the frigid night. Not so with us—not if we intended to pursue Old Bones in the morning. Peter’s knees hurt so he could barely straighten them. I brought a liniment oil that I rubbed into his aching joints.

We drank tea and ate a stew that I mixed from turnips, cured beef, onions, and other odds and ends. Bland fare, I must admit. Peter nodded as he ate and commented, “It’s warm if nothing else.”

“Thank you,” he said, hidden in the depths of his blankets and bedroll.

“Whether he intends to spring a trap or not, we must still pursue him,” I said.

A long silence drew between us and I assumed Peter had fallen asleep. He startled me by saying, “His woodcraft is impressive. He scares me, Nicholas.”

“His speed may be nothing but the stride of his long legs.”

“Aye...his size and speed are something to be wary, but think also of what we haven’t seen. Old Bones has mortal needs same as us. He must eat—his piles of scat prove as much. He must sleep at times, he must shelter himself from the cold. His clothing is taken from the forest; the bearskin cloak he wore was fresh and dripping. So where are the snares he uses to catch his food and clothes? Where are the remains of his cook fires, or—if he needs not cooked food—where are the carcasses of the things he eats? The mice and birds we find in his scat can’t be more than snacks for a creature of his size. Where are his shelters? The places where he finds rest? Either I’m wrong and he needs none of these things—a scary enough thought as it makes him many times tougher than any foe I’ve ever pursued—or his woodcraft is such that he can hide all traces of it from us…and we are indeed inside a maze of his own making, which scares me even more.”

More words had he just spoken, I must remark, than I’ve heard spoken from old Peter in all the last year combined!

“Your thoughts are darkened by the night. You’ll feel differently in the morning,” I assured him.

“My bloodlust earlier today was folly. What foolishness! I think now that you saved our lives.”

“Sooner or later—“

“—we must confront him. I know. And we’ll do so rested and well-fed, our bones warmed by a fire and softened with liniment, thanks all to you. Still, Nicholas…I fear him.”

For a long while I watched my friend’s frosted breath puff from under his covers. “He’s stronger than us,” Peter said. ”Faster than us. His woodcraft gives him mastery of the forest, allows him to move like a ghost. Your suspicions seem all the more reasonable in the dark of night: he’s leading us into a trap…a trap we will not see until it has sprung.”

“What about our arrows embedded in his guts? Surely that gives us an advantage?”

“I pray, Nicholas…” he said, his voice becoming old and weak, filled with a hopelessness that chilled my bones. “I pray you are right.”

Peter did not speak of his nighttime fears in the morning; we broke our camp in typical fashion, silently smoked our pipes, ate a warm breakfast of cinnamon oatmeal and bits of dried fruit, and rejoined the trail left by Old Bones.

The morning sun brought us little comfort, although the sky had at last broken its lead belly of clouds. The sun, however, appeared sickly and green-hued; it looked like a lump of poison, and would have sent less superstitious men heading home. A dark thought slipped into my mind like an oily serpent: maybe turning around at this point would not spare us from the indomitable woodsman of Peter’s midnight fears.

Be that as it may, these two old men would continue in their own way; moving with a renewed slow and cautious approach, all the hot blood from yesterday boiled away, eyes studying every rock and tree for portents of a trap, arrows laid across our bows, and Ghul-Rostóv loose in its scabbard.

“A dread sun,” I remarked when I could hold my silence no longer.

“Maybe Julie will cancel even so ill an omen,” Peter said. “I see that she watches us now from your carriage.”

Indeed, I deliberately left the rag doll’s head slightly outside the side-pocket of my rucksack—and was glad to hear the steel returned in my friend’s voice.

“Maybe,” I said.

On a patch of land with no significant features—a few birch trees that looked no different than the leafless thousands we passed over the previous two days; a mottled bit of flat ground that held a mixture of frosted dirt and grass and a few white-dusted shrubs—we stepped at last into Old Bones’s trap.

This happened when the sickly, green sun had risen to its noon position and the whole sky seemed poisoned and yellow by its presence. We still had our bows ready, we still walked with quiet caution, stopping often to investigate a suspicious loop of vine or a disturbed ring of dirt always to discover nothing. We crept forward as though we pursued Satan himself.

I remember the sound of a distant bird trill, the crunch of soft steps on the hoar frost—then Peter tripped forward as though pushed by a pair of invisible hands and was lifted by his ankle several feet into the air. He had been passing a tall tree and now dangled from a simple snare no more complicated than what a child would lay to catch rabbits or groundhogs but placed with such deceptive skill that neither of us spotted the contraption until Peter was ripped off his feet and hung upside down before me. He somehow managed to keep hold of his bow despite the savage pull of the snare’s noose. My friend spun in a slow, struggling circle while I watched him, stunned.

He cried out, “Watch yourself! He approaches you from behind!”

I moved with awful slowness; wholly uncoordinated, a useless, frightened old man whose heart seemed to flop in his chest like a fish dropped in an oak barrel.

I dropped my bow, dropped the arrow that had been knocked in its rest, and was lucky not to impale the top of my foot with its stone-sharpened tip. Frozen grass crunched behind me as a massive shadow draped my fallen bow.

I grabbed Ghul-Rostóv and drew the ringing blade, spinning on my left heel and putting all my weight into a pinwheel slash aimed at the creator of the shadow behind me.

Old Bones had emerged from some hiding place that neither of us had noticed. His arm was raised over his head. The knotted club held in his hand looked to weight at least fifty pounds—a single blow to the head or chest would result in certain death, nor could I hope to parry such devastating weight should it bear upon me.

My slashing blade clove Old Bones to his ribs. I grabbed Ghul-Rostóv’s pommel and tried to drive the tip into his chest, but the hill demon swiped aside my sword with his free hand and stepped away.

I was left reeling and unbalanced.

Old Bones looked at his seeping chest wound, then looked at me with the wisp of a smile on his fleshy lips.

Oh, Lord—to describe the horror of the albino devil before me! His eerie pink eyes! His stench like the spilled organs of a dead pig! At once demon and primate and man, a sloppy, haphazard construct, surely made in haste or drunkenness by the rudimentary hands of a lesser god—or perhaps an older god than He who built man and heaven.

The whispered stories I’ve heard of Old Bones matched his appearance; stories that drifted from Bialystok and the Pripet marshes, up through Dünaberg and through bustling cities like Nóvgorod from the lips of his many victims.

Seeing him stand before me…I believe them all.

I grabbed Ghul-Rostóv with both hands and launched forward, intending to skewer the demon’s chest, but the creature managed to hold his massive palm before him like a shield. My grandfather’s sword lanced his hand until the hilt struck his palm-flesh and the tip hovered inches from his nose. Old Bones curled his fingers around the hilt and pulled the blade from my trembling hands.

He dropped his club and pulled the steel from his hand, his pink eyes never leaving mine. I tried to grab a rabbit-knife sheathed in my belt, but my hands fumbled on my jacket folds. My desperate gaze jumped all over the clearing, searching for some kind of advantage. I saw that Peter had knocked another arrow while hanging upside down and drew his large bow. He swayed from an arched branch, snared fast by a ghastly ligature made of sheep’s intestines.

Please, God in Heaven, I thought. Let his aim be true!

Peter loosed his arrow and it whistled across the demon’s face, coming so close that his white hair blustered as though swept by a wild breeze. The arrow disappeared into the grey woods where it clattered into some branches. Old Bones did not appear to notice the near-miss.

He placed Ghul-Rostóv on the ground and planted one giant foot on the blade. I looked upon his gnarled feet, topped with toenails so encrusted with fungus they resembled dollops of dried custard. He grabbed the pommel and pulled upward; the sword snapped in twain.

Old Bones tossed the grip over his shoulder and kicked the blade into the trees.

He jabbed me in the chest with his club while I fumbled for my hidden rabbit-knife. A blow delivered by a smithy’s hammer would have the same kind of impact. I fell backward and lay sprawled on the ground. My heart stopped beating for a few seconds and pain shivered down my limbs. Then the flopping fish in my chest began to flop again and the pain eased enough for me to crawl upon my hands and knees.

Old Bones swung another retrained blow at poor, dangling Peter, who had knocked another arrow while I lay incapacitated. His heavy club could have shattered Peter’s skull; could have crushed his brains to jelly. Instead, Old Bones merely struck the bow from Peter’s hands.

Now we were effectively unarmed and at his mercy.

Old Bones, I believe, was trying to communicate with me. Whether he could speak any verbal language, even among his own people, I’m not certain. With us, he spoke through gesture. After disarming Peter, Old Bones revealed a pumpkin that he carried at his waist in a netting of frayed rope. He pulled off the stem cap and upended the pumpkin.

Blood poured from the hollowed gourd, splattering the ground by his feet.

I understood his message clear enough. Old Bones bore no injuries other than the two sword blows incurred by Ghul-Rostóv (and even those bled no more than a crimson trickle). Neither of our previous arrows had struck him—nor did we find those arrows in the thicket where he had crouched when we first came upon him.

Old Bones had faked his cries of pain, gathered our arrows, and left the thicket to lead us to this clearing. On the day previous, he had killed a sheep taken from Cyril’s farm, drained its blood into a hollowed pumpkin and harvested the sheep’s intestines to make the snare that would later grab Peter’s ankle. He daubed the sheep’s blood on the rocks and trees to both make a trail and to convince us that he was injured and perhaps dying.

Surprising Old Bones and forcing him to abandon the eviscerated sheep before he could bury its carcass may have been the only part of our hunt that did not go exactlyas our foe had planned. Our only success was more a matter of ill-timing than skill.

The White Devil dropped his club and drew a long knife carved from a human femur—likely some poor victim from Moghilëv.

He tested the knife’s keen edge with a calloused thumb and approached Peter.

Old Bones paused and looked at me. When I did not move, he resumed his slow gait. Then he stopped and looked at me again.

What do you want, O terrible Lord of the Forest? I thought.

He sliced the snare with a lazy swipe. Peter fell to the ground, dazed and winded. Old Bones planted his foot on Peter’s chest just as he planted his foot on Ghul-Rostóv. He knelt low, pressing his weight on Peter’s lungs. Peter screamed and grabbed at the massive foot.

Old Bones raised the bone knife over my friend’s face. The bleached devil turned his head and looked at me again. For a moment his eyes caught the reflected light of the green sun and flashed like rusted coins.

I knew instantly what he wanted. He had been stalking our campfire that first night. He had studied us…studied our weaknesses, the things we coveted, the things we hoped would protect us. Like Peter’s monstrous bow. Like Ghul-Rostóv. Like Julie.

I shouted, “Wait! Please, wait!” and pulled my daughter’s rag doll from the side-pocket of my rucksack. I held the doll before me, offered it—our first sacrifice—to Old Bones, catching one final wisp of my daughter’s sweet scent.

Old Bones nodded. He lifted his foot from Peter’s chest and slid the Satanic bone-knife into his jumbled belt. He snatched the doll from my hands and dropped it into the netting which formerly held a hollowed pumpkin filled with sheep’s blood.

A final surprise yet awaited me, a lesson likely taught to the citizens of Mogilëv over many painful sessions. I had learned much about power and domination from Old Bones.

Now comes my first lesson in malice.

He retrieved his club and turned to leave. He had us defeated; our weapons were broken, our spirits crushed. His plan to break us was a triumph. He could have walked away and carried with him everything he sought when he first laid eyes on our farms, but in Old Bones’ corrupted spirit dwelled a perverse sense of humor.

He turned to leave, then paused. His broad, mongoloid grin peeled back to reveal his blackened gums and dark, wooden teeth.

He turned back upon me and swung his dreadful club.

My right knee collapsed with a wretched crunch.

I screamed and fell onto my back, blessedly losing consciousness as I watched Old Bones fade into the forest.

The journey back to our village took twice as long as our departure. Peter splinted my shattered knee and assembled a pair of wooden crutches from the branches around us—simple implements that saved my life as much as sacrificing Julie had saved his. Without them to increase my mobility, I would have starved in this unforgiving forest. Peter made our fires and cooked our food for five nights as we hobbled home. He also made a splint for his own foot; the snare had dislocated his ankle, but nary a word of complaint did he utter.

Each night Old Bones watched us camp. We heard his footsteps and his shaggy, hoarse laughter, heard the squawk of nettled crows, and many times saw polished coins flashing in the darkness.

Once I awoke with the smell of my daughter clinging to my nostrils and imagined that Old Bones had somehow slipped through Peter’s guard and wiped the tiny rag doll across my sleeping face.

And—in my imagination—he did so with the same leering grin that he wore while cloving in my knee.

The others farmers did not readily accept our tale of defeat. Nor, I believe, did the stout citizens of Mogilëv accept their domination without some initial struggle.

Michael Bilíbin, that hulking farmer-smithy, stronger and bigger than any man in our village, and his three lusty boys armed themselves with bows and hammers and pitchforks (and bottles of vodka) and marched into the woods with great clamor and applause, vowing to bring back Old Bones’s head.

They did not possess the woodcraft of myself or quiet Peter, but believed they made up for this lacking with large, slabby muscles, hairy chests, and youthful bloodlust.

The next night, I found four severed heads lined outside my cottage door beside four penises coated in beeswax and used as candles to light the agonized faces of the Bilíbin lads.

Judging by the expression on their frosted faces, I had no doubt which body parts had been dismembered first.

Then came the morning that Peter found an amulet made of twigs and shaped like an asterisk hanging from his door on a cord made of tanned Bilíbin flesh.

You may imagine a gathering of proud fathers and powerful men at this next juncture; surely there was a meeting held in someone’s living quarters beside a roaring hearth, or in the rectory of our solemn church. In your imagination you may hear loud arguments, proclamations accented by fists striking into palms. But none of this happened.

As we knew that Peter and I (and no others) had to be the ones to hunt Old Bones, so we knew that Peter and I had to be the ones who would chop down a birch tree and plane the wood to fashion a hitching post. Peter painted the post a deep, crimson color. We picked the fattest sheep from Peter’s farm—he had been delivered the amulet, so in the albino’s language he had been selected to give the next sacrifice, or so we believed—and led the poor sheep into a flat, frost-covered onion field near the edge of the forest.

We hammered the post deep in the frozen earth, lashed Peter’s bleating sheep, and left it there to await what untold horrors the night would later bring.

“The Gods sent you.”The big Roman looked up, munching on a mouthful of chowder. The woman approaching the table was dressed in faded rags, her graying hair combed up in the style of the Colchis, pale eyes staring blindly in the general direction of his face.“We serve no gods, woman,” he said, and spooned more fish in his mouth.“But you do,” she said, breathlessly. “I prayed for your coming, and the gods answered.”The Roman eyed his companion. She turned her bright violet eyes on the blind woman and scanned her thoroughly. “What did you pray for?” she asked, her Greek glib with the accent of far away Alexandria.The blind woman staggered forward, one hand groping in front of her. She found the bench and sat, with a sigh. “I prayed for delivery,” she said, her head tilted to one side. A strand of stringy hair had come loose from her coif, and brushed her wrinkled cheek as she spoke. “I prayed for warriors, to deliver my daughter from the mouth of the Toad.”The Roman closed his eyes and took a deep breath.“The Toad?” the Aegyptian asked. She pushed her empty bowl to the side, and leaned closer.The man sighed. “Toad or bullfrog,” he said in a low voice, “we are not interested. We are just travelers on the road to Rhizaion.”The Aegyptian ignored him. She put her slender fingers on the parchment-like hand of the older woman. The tattoo snaking up her arm seemed to flow with her movement, and her golden bangles jingled. “Tell me more about this Toad.”The Roman breathed the name of Mithras.There were men, sitting at the tables around, all of them fishermen by their look. They stared covertly at them, mumbling in the local uncouth dialect, and looked none too pleased. The air was heavy with more than just the smell of peat, overcooked food and stale wine.“The Toad sits enthroned on his islet,” the woman said, in a strange sing-song voice. “He's always been there, since before Mummu Tiamatu. He sits and dreams, and the fishes obey his dreams.” She nodded to herself. “They swim in and out of them.”The Roman looked down into his bowl, a fish-head staring at him with a dead eye. He groaned.“We also live in his shadow,” the woman continued, “at the ragged edge of his dreams. We pray to him, we worship, and he brings us good fishing, and much food...”“Enough of this!”A big man with a broken nose and scarred knuckles had come to stand by their table, a hand on the shoulder of the old woman. He reeked of stale wine and old fish.“Gyrus,” the blind woman said, half turning her head. Aculeo wondered if she recognized him by his voice or by his smell.“You've heard enough of this nonsense,” the man called Gyrus said. He spoke Greek with a thick accent. He turned to Aculeo. “This old hag can go back to her house, and you can get on your way.” He slipped two coins from his belt and dropped them on the table. “Your lunch is on me,” he said.The Roman and the Aegyptian traded a glance. The coins rolled on the table and clicked against each other.“It's still raining, and the road to Rhizaion is long.” the Roman said, lifring his empty bowl, “And I was about to get me a second serving of your tasty fish soup.”Gyrus cracked his knuckles. “We don't like strangers in our place,” he growled.“You're breaking my heart,” the Roman replied, his eyes in the other man's. Gyrus leaned forward, placing a hand on the table, his back bent, the ample shoulders curved, his face a span away from Aculeo's. Garlic hung heavily on his breath.“I'll break more than your heart, you--”Silver twirled in the Roman's right hand, and he drove a dagger into the table, right through the hand of the fisherman. The blade quivered, its dull thunk lost in the scream of the fisherman.The Aegyptian grabbed his wrist, keeping his hand in place. “You are right,” she said, coldly, as the scream died in a gurgle. “Enough of this nonsense.”The man spread his fingers. The blade had slipped neatly through the space between his index and middle finger, his skin untouched.“Be gone,” the young woman said, loud enough for everyone to hear, and gestuired fastidiously. “Or they will have to fit your stump with one of those hooks-things.”She let go of his wrist, and Gyrus took a step back, then another, then he was out of the door.Someone laughed, somewhere in the common room.“Now,” the Aegyptian said to the blind woman, “tell us about this Toad, and what it all has to do with your daughter.”Aculeo shook his head, pulled his dagger from the table, and then crossed his arms.Raindrops spread circles on the still surface of the water. The nameless bay was a motionless stretch of sea between the coast and the low islet where, so the woman had said, the Toad dwelt.“My daughter in exchange for a good haul,” the blind woman had said. “Like in the old days, she was brought to the Altar early this morning, there to wait for the night, and for the Toad. Once a year this happens, and it was my daughter they took.”Aculeo heaved on the oars. A dark woolen cloak on his shoulders, the hood protecting his short hair from the drizzle, he looked miserable like a wet cat.“I don't like this thing one bit, mind you,” he said.Amunet sighed. “You heard the poor woman.”Her own fine silk mantle was of midnight blue, closed at the shoulder with a golden brooch. She was stretched on the bench at the back of the boat, one elbow propped up on the broadside.“She should have called on the local proconsul,” he said. “These villages, they are stipendiarii, they have rights under Imperial law. Call in the Legion and be done, I say.”The Aegyptian sighed. “Yes, you said it. Repeatedly. And you saw the woman's reaction.” She shook her head. Then with a beringed finger she pushed a strand of black hair back under the hood. “We are in the sticks, in case you didn't notice. These yokels don't trust authority. They’d sooner bow to their strange god that call on the Empire.”Aculeo chuckled. “And I do not trust these, as you call them, yokels. This is the Colchis, where they breed witches. A guy called Ovid said that.”Amunet curled her lips in a smirk. “For all your proud civilization, you Romans are a superstitious breed yourselves. Colchis breeds witches, Britannia is home to the worms of the earth, Aegypt is a land of sorcerers...”The Roman grinned. “It was not me they were about to sacrifice on a dead god's altar,” he said.She sniffed, ignoring his barb. “The poor woman's daughter's been left in the middle of nowhere as fodder for some local pet god,” she straightened her shoulders. “We can't let such things happen.”Aculeo laughed. “Pull the other one, wench. We have no obligation at all to these bumpkins.”“What about your famous Roman pietas, you stupid ox?” she asked. “Are women worthless, then, to be stranded on lonesome rocks and fed to strange beasts?”“Leave alone my pietas, you witch,” he grinned. “You are just plain curious about this old fish god of theirs. I saw it in your eyes the moment the old hag started bleating. You know something, and you probably hope to gain something from this boat trip.”She did not reply. Aculeo squinted at her. “Something she said,” he went on. “Was it something you read in your father's books?”Amunet was silent for a moment. “The name she mentioned,” she finally said. “Mummu Tiamatu. That’s your something.” She shivered, and pulled her cloak closer. “That's an old name, very old.”“Old as in,” he shrugged, “dog-headed gods and cat mummies?”She shrugged. “Older, possibly.”“Mother of Mithras.”If there was something the former centurion had learned in the last few months, it was that in Amunet's world, ‘old’ equaled homicidally dangerous.She nodded. “We're there,” she said.He turned, and looked at the double hump of the island, a dark shadow in the mist hanging low on the still surface of the sea.The pier was where the old woman had said it would be. It was a rickety affair built with parts of old wrecked boats. Aculeo tied their boat to one of the posts and then helped Amunet step up, his big hand holding hers firmly. He looked around, grimacing. The thin rain had stopped, and mist was rising, together with unpleasant gurgles from the still water.Amunet looked down, at the oily green water. Bubbles popped on the murky green surface. She wrinkled her nose. “Feels more like a swamp than the sea.”Aculeo nodded, and loosened his short sword in his scabbard. Gaunt olive trees grew along the shore. The small beach where they stood soon gave way to high and rocky escarpments on both sides of the pier. The island itself was a small limestone outcrop, with steep flanks like an upturned bowl, covered in sparse shrubbery, and from where they stood they could see a barren plateau, where some big rocks pointed to the gray sky, like the fingers of a skeletal hand.“What a dump,” Aculeo whispered.Amunet walked by his side. The sun was low on the western horizon, casting a weak light on the Palemonium sea and the Pontus Euxinus beyond. “We better get moving,” she said. “It will get dark soon.”They climbed up the side of the hill, in a shallow valley shaped like a funnel, the pier well behind them, the standing stones up ahead, looming. Silence was like a wet cloak stretched over the landscape.“There are stories,” Amunet said suddenly. “About fish-men, that were worshiped like gods, back in the time of Babylon, and before that, in the land of the Two Rivers.”Aculeo stopped, one hand on his side, massaging slowly, and took a deep breath as he waited for her to continue.“My father had a book in his library,” she said, “a scroll about a war among those ancient peoples. The Hittites, that my ancestors despised, were caught in a war that dragged for ages without going anywhere. So, exhausted by the fighting and seeking a quick resolution, some of them called on the fish-god Dagaan. And he answered to their prayers, as he and his brethren were wont. He listened to the plea of the Hittites, and then he asked for sacrifice, and submission, which again was the way of its ilk. In exchange, he promised to cook their enemies on a fisherman's spit, and serve them as dinner to his loyal servants.”Aculeo thought back at his fish lunch and made a face.“Because he was one of many, this Dagaan,” Amunet went on. “Which is a name that in the language of the Phoenicians meant 'upward man and downward fish'. According to the ancient scrolls of Toth, he and his brethren came down on our world from the star Sopdet, Sothis to the Greeks, or Seirios.”“The Dog Star,” Aculeo said.“Yes.”He put both his hands on his hips. “And so you brought me to this dump to find a fish-man from the Dog Star?” He laughed, shaking his head. “Your people always had a thing for beast-headed gods and other such stuff.”Amunet stared at him. “You are stupid,” she said. She sounded almost affectionate.“And so what, you want to check if your late father's books tell the truth? Want this toad god to set you up a skewered fish dinner?”She looked at him, hard. “Knowledge is power.”“And the thing with power is, it can be too much for some people, while at the same it's never enough.”“How wise of you, Roman.”“Comes to me naturally,” he grinned.Amunet smiled sadly. “But I'm not some people, you know.”He shrugged. “As if I didn’t know already,” he said, and started again. Something cracked under his foot. The Roman knelt down and showed Amunet a broken femur, the head a polished, pale sphere.“Looks like we are in the right place,” she said.“Or the wrong one,” he replied.He stood, and pulled his sword from the scabbard.Fat grasses grew thick along the slope that led to the standing stones, a dark green carpet that contrasted starkly with the bone-white cliffs of the windward side of the island. There were more bones, scattered amongst the grasses, their number increasing as Aculeo and Amunet climbed up. What was left of a man lay in a bush, twigs growing through his pale ribcage, one branching off and shooting through his lower jaw and out of its mouth, lifting the skull off the ground.Aculeo examined the remains, and showed Amunet the dead man's sword, half a span of broken blade covered in a green layer of corrosion.“This guy was no sacrifice,” he said.Amunet pulled a few leaves, and rubbed them between her hands, then sniffed, grimacing at the smell. “Never saw this kind of grass before.”“Looks like seaweed,” Aculeo said. He looked around, at the mist climbing up around them. “It feels like the bottom of the sea.”They continued uphill, and finally they came to the top. From there, they could see that the island was in fact shaped like a clover, three roughly round mounds gathered around a deep triangular valley.Aculeo slapped his hand on the flank of one of the rocks they had seen from below. It was a standing stone, part of a skewed circle. Spirals were etched on the surface, and other signs.“So, where's the girl?” he asked.Amunet pointed at the hollow below. “The old woman said the altar is in the middle of the island.”Aculeo scratched his chin. “I wonder...”“What?”He shook his head. “Nothing. Let's move, it will be dark already down there.”Down at the bottom, water sloshed around their ankles. Aculeo cursed. Amunet lifted her cloak up, grimacing in distaste. “A place fit for toads, indeed,” she said, fastidiously.It was like the bottom of a bowl, the water dark and oily, the air foul with the smell of decay and death. There was a low knoll at the center of the dusky depression, little more than a bump, a white stone table on top of it. A young girl was sitting on top of the table. “I guess that's her,” Aculeo said.She was thin and pale, naked. She was sitting up, legs crossed, arms wrapped against her chest. She rocked slightly, her disheveled hair covering her face. She hummed softly, rhythmically.“Whatever did they do to her?” Amunet whispered, taking a step forward. Her foot caught something, she stumbled. Aculeo grabbed her arm through the cloak, and steadied her.Sitting on the stone slab, the girl ignored them, and kept her slow swaying movement, humming her strange low tune. Amunet advanced to the altar, while Aculeo squinted at the dark water. There were bones, in there, and other stuff.“You have come,” the girl said, startling them. Her voice was husky and resounded strangely in the enclosed space. As she turned her head towards the Aegyptian, the curtain of hair parted, revealing a pale face, with a wide, thin-lipped mouth and blind eyes like her mother's.“It's all right, young one,” Amunet said softly.The girl chuckled, a liquid, evil sound that sent a shiver down the woman's spine. “Yes, it is!", the girl said. "Everything's just fine and dandy!"The thin girl leaned forward, putting her hands down flat on the surface of the altar. Something she'd been cradling rolled on the stone table. A human skull. It bumped on the altar, rolled off the edge and fell in the water, hitting with a metallic clang a rusty half-submerged breastplate. Aculeo cursed under his breath. The pool was filled with remains. Not just bones, broken, marrow sucked out of them. Pieces of damaged armor, too. Dented helms. Lost shin guards. Bent bronze swords, covered with a sickly green patina. His half-forgotten misgiving coalesced into stark reality. “We are the main course,” he whispered.The girl smiled. “My mother found you,” she said, with another deep chuckle. “She kept the promise. They will be pleased.”Her lips parted, revealing a black hole of a mouth lined with a myriad thin sharp teeth, like a fish's.“Mother of Toth!”Amunet felt Aculeo's shoulders brush her own, as the man moved back-to-back with her. “Looks like you are going to meet your toad god, after all,” the Roman said. He was rolling his cloak around his right arm, his gladius at the ready. “For dinner, and we’ll be the main course!”Shapes moved in the mist, at the darker margin of the bowl. One of them came forward, sloshing through the bog, webbed hands extended, glowing eyes round and inhuman. Scaly and foul, it made a strange hiss, air huffing out of its neck gills.Aculeo met it with his padded arm, blocking its attack. He quickly stabbed it in its flaccid gut. The thing gurgled, eyes unblinking, and the Roman pushed it back with his foot.The fish-man splashed in the bog, thrashing wildly in the low water. Its dying throes caused its mates to tarry. They spread around, hissing. Aculeo counted six of them.“Now what, mistress?” he hissed.Leaning against his back, Amunet was rummaging in her satchel. “Just gimme a moment.”“Be my guest.”Another of the things ran forward, its talons scratching Aculeo's chest, its tiny teeth biting hard on the rolled cloak.The blind girl was standing now, cough-like sounds coming from her mouth, her fingers pointing at the man and the woman standing back to back at the foot of the altar. The Roman ignored her. He punched the fish-man in its wide, frog-like face, cracking its skull with the pommel of his sword, and then turned to meet a second attacker with a backhand sweep. They had bone plates on their shoulders and forearms, these creatures, the texture of turtle shell.“Now it would be nice,” he said, urgently.Sparks crackled behind him, and a flame sparked. Amunet waved her hand around, tracing snakes of dense gray smoke with her burning bunch of herbs. The smell of laurel, mixed with other erbs he did not recognize, filled Aculeo's nostrils, replacing the smell of the pool. The fish-men fell back, hissing in chorus through their gills.Amunet drove her elbow in his side. “Move it, big man,” she said. “This won't hold them back forever.”“You can't leave!” the fish-girl screamed. “The Toad will have you.”Aculeo pushed his companion towards the slope. “Go!” he said.“What...?”In a single flowing movement, he pulled the thick-bladed pugio he carried in a sheath at the small of his back, he extended his arm, and let it fly. The blade turned slowly in mid-air, and embedded itself deep in the chest of the girl. Her unseeing eyes widened. She staggered back, and fell flat on her back, her legs shaking.The creatures rose around them in a chorus of wet animal sounds.Acukleo turned and started up the hill, hot on the heels of Amunet.The wet grass was slippery. A webbed hand grabbed him by the ankle, pulling him back. Aculeo slid, fell flat on his face and slid down along the muddy slope, turning in time to impale a fish-creature on his short sword. The monster fell on him, its limp body as heavy as two men, pushing the breath out of his lungs, suffocating him with its foul reek.This close, Aculeo thought he could make out the features of the man Gyrus, beneath the folds of flabby skin and the feral maws of the creature. With a grunt, Aculeo pushed it back with a knee, and rolled it away.Two more fish-men were standing over him. He looked around. There was a bent, green blade sticking in the side of the hill, pale vines curling around its blunted blade. Aculeo grabbed it, and swept at the legs of the closest creature, unbalancing it enough for weight, gravity and water-soaked ground to do the rest. With a surprised gurgle, the thing rolled back, and fell splashing in the bog.The gladius was still stuck in the dead fish-man body. Aculeo did not try to stand. He kicked his remaining attacker back, ignoring the sharp talons scratching his foot. He gripped the protruding hilt of his weapon, and pulled himself up. He lurched uphill, slid again, knelt down. With a grunt, on his hands and knees, he scampered up the slope.More monsters were coming, sloshing through the pool. The first stray drops of rain hit Aculeo's mud-smeared face.Amunet grabbed him by the front of his ripped tunic and pulled him up.“They baited us,” he said, breathlessly, but the woman paid no heed.“Get out of my way,” she said.Breathing hard, the Roman stepped behind her, discarding the bent, rusty old blade. He shook his gladius, trying to shake off it the gooey blood of the fish-things. Amunet stood behind him, arms spread out, almost touching the two standing stones by her sides.Fish-things were scrambling up the slope, their webbed feet slipping and sliding on the slimy ground. She pushed them back from her mind, closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath. Ignore the smell, she told herself, ignore the fear and its cold grip on your innards, do not be afraid and do what you were born to do.Aculeo watched her straighten her back, relaxing her shoulders, her blue cloak discarded, bunched around her feet. It was like a low breeze was playing with her black hair, and it was hard to focus on the black designs snaking along her arm.She spread her fingers, and her lips began shaping words the Roman found hard to catch, harder to follow.Amunet chanted, her normally clear soprano sinking to a low, almost masculine tone. Aculeo could make out only a few words. “Where do I stand, who do I am.”The Roman felt goosebumps run down his arms, his Roman upbringing rejecting the supernatural. The chant was uncanny, its rhythm alien. It was like each syllable he heard was just one of a cluster of others that escaped his senses, but sent shivers up his spine.“Where is the dog star?” Amunet murmured.The first of the fish-men was by now level with the plateau. Aculeo took a step forward, ready to strike, then stopped. He caught a tingling in the air, the smell of a thunderstorm. The bangles on Amunet's wrist were trembling, jangling against each other, and her hair was being swept back by a wind the Roman saw, but did not feel.“Where is the moon?” Amunet said, and now the other sounds, the alien sounds Aculeo could not scan were there, and for a brief moment he caught their echo in her voice. The fish-man was standing still, its pale yellow, faintly glowing eyes fixed on the woman in white. Two others joined it, and stopped by its side.Amunet went on, her voice reduced to a low growl. “You hear me calling to the wind, by the ancient pacts summoned.” Her breath rasped in her throat. “Twice named, twice known.”She pulled her hands together in front of her bosom with a loud clap to which her violet eyes flicked open, glowing like a cat's. “Begone!” she thundered.And for a long, eternal heartbeat nothing happened. One of the creatures grinned, and took a step forward. It stopped, gills dilating in a long low hiss. Lightning blazed through the clouds, chased by the low rumble of thunder, and then the earth shook.It was like a giant hand swept the side of the hill. The fish-men were crushed, pushed one against the other, pressed to the ground. They rolled down the slope in a tangle of arms and legs, while another deep rumble shook the mound and a large chunk of rock detached from the side of the hill, sliding down in a mess of earth, gravel, broken rocks and dying creatures. The standing stone to Amunet's left tilted and leaned at an angle. The one on her right toppled, rolled down the hillside and landed with a crash in the bog.Amunet breathed again. She looked up at the black sky, turned to the Roman, and then swayed, faltered and sat down heavily on the ground. She shook her head. She was dizzy, spent, her oval face pale and her lips black against it. “Let's get away from this place,” she said wearily.Aculeo helped her to her feet. “You all right?”Thick drops of rain splattered around them.She nodded. A thin trickle of blood escaped from the corner of her mouth.“I bit my tongue,” she said, catching Aculeo's glance.Aculeo handed his sword to Amunet and kicked the boat away from the pier. She held the weapon between thumb and forefinger, keeping it away from her body, blade pointed to the ground, eyeing it like it was a dead fish. “What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.“You stab anything that comes out of the water.”“A spear would be better.”The Roman just grunted, pushing on the oars. The coast was a blacker strip against the black of night, faint lights barely visible through the thick veil of the rain. No more than three miles away. Amunet sat at the prow of the boat, watching the water, gripping the sword in her right hand in a more practical way.A long scraping sound came from beneath them, and the boat rocked. Both man and woman cursed.“Any idea?” the Roman asked.“Row faster.”The boat capsized.Amunet went through air, rain, salt water. The sea closed over her head. She floated in blackness, blind, helpless, suspended in a nothingness that pressed on her and tried to drown her. A large hand grabbed her left leg. She kicked out, and it ripped her golden anklet away. Then it took hold of her calf, and pulled her further down, her white tunic blowing up like a wind caught it, her legs scissoring naked. Her heart pounding against her ribs, she felt the pressure of air as it pushed to escape her lungs. She kicked and floundered, but the grip did not loosen.Down, beneath her, pale yellow eyes, enormous and unblinking, stared up at her, and the thing started climbing up her body, while she thrashed and tried to swim to the surface. The hands gripped her thighs, then her hips, her waist, and finally the eyes were gazing at her, and there was fire in her throat and in her chest and suddenly there was rage, a blind, killer fury that pushed every other thing back and far away.Amunet grabbed the thing by the neck, and tightened her grip. The thing moved, its hands holding her arms. She ignored the scratches and the pain just as she was ignoring the red flashes in front of her eyes, the roar in her ears. She just pressed with her hands on the thick corded neck of the creature, until her fingers slipped into the warm softness of the creature's gills, and she racked them with her sharp nails, while her thumbs kept pushing on the throat of the creature.Time stopped. The roar in her ears stopped.She was free.Bubbles escaping through her pressed lips, she swam to the surface, broke through, felt rain hammering her face as she gulped great mouthfuls of sweet, cold air.Her eyes found their focus again. There was the upturned kernel of their boat, a few yards away, and Aculeo balancing on its side. He was clobbering one of the fish-men with a broken oar, shouting “Die, you cursed son of a catfish! Die! Die!”Amunet laughed, tasting salt water in her mouth. She spat, and moved slowly towards the boat, while the Roman kept fighting, and cursing the name of fifty different gods.An old man with his two sons, sailing back home after a sad unfruitful fishing night under the rain, sighted the upturned boat drifting in the early morning mist about five miles from the Trapeios headland. At first they thought it was the back of some great fish, then they saw the two figures clinging to what now they recognized for a wreck. They coasted closer, and the man hailed them in good Greek, his voice hoarse. Both he and the thin woman by his side were ragged, disheveled, their ripped tunics splattered with red and black stains. Both were bleeding from cuts and scratches, and they looked pale, haggard and dangerous.“Father,” his older son said, “What if they mean to harm us?”The old man glanced at him. “What for?” He cast a look at their empty vessel. “What could they want to steal from us?”The young man eyed the two castaways warily. “He's an ugly brute, and big.”The old man shrugged. “And because of that you would leave them there? Food for the fish, or worse?”So they took them on board, and gave them water, and a blanket for the woman. She was silent and grim. Both young men looked at her long and hard, fascinated by her tattooed arm and the violet eyes under her wet, black bangs.“We won't cut your throats,” the man grinned, handing the water skin back, and massaging the back of his neck. He was a Roman, the sign of his legion burned on his shoulder.The younger boy kept staring at the woman, her legs criss-crossed with red claw marks where the blanket she used as a cloak opened on her side. She glanced sideways at him, and he blushed.“What attacked you?”, he asked.The man and the woman exchanged a quick glance, but it was his father that answered him.“Don't you know where we are?” he asked back, cuffing him on the ear. Everybody's eyes trailed on the distant humps of the lost little islet, a gray shadow in the thinning mist against the brown line of the coast.The fishermen made gestures against the evil eye, the sign of the horns that invoked the power of Mithras.“Not many come back from that place,” the older son said, looking at the two passengers with a new respect.“Nobody should go there in the first place,” the black-haired woman replied, bitterly.“Only strangers are foolish enough to get baited,” the younger fisherman blurted out, and then his face reddened when the woman laughed, a loud clear sound that brought a sparkle in her strange eyes. Looking downcast, he moved to the poop, and started morosely to disentangle the nets, and throw the refuse overboard.The old man shook his head, and turned to the Roman. “We are sailing to Trapeios,” he said, pointing west.The Roman nodded. “That would be fine with us.”And then he sat by the side of his sleeping companion, and looked out at the sea.

Editor

Curtis Ellett is a frustrated fantasy writer and a founding member of the 196 Southshore Writers' Group. He has lived on three continents, studied archaeology and worked as a newspaper ad designer and a bookseller. He now gets paid to write. Find him on Twitter @CurtisEllett.